the carbon based mistake is zine publishing venture started in 1998 by Marc Calvary after a series of other depressingly titled zines that begun in 1993.

It currently takes the form of zines, photography, writing, blasphemy, design, and printing.
Eternally residing in new york, the carbon based mistake has won the Writers Digest award for Best Art Design, has been featured in Print Magazine's Regional Design Annual from 2003-2006, as well as issues 5, 6, and 7 of the Austrian design journal +rosebud.

Marc Calvary went into a hibernation during an extended spiral of depression. He finally decided to stop being such a damn baby and get back to work.

New zines have included various concepts and ideas such as one called Societal Monsters that associates Christians with serial killers and child molesters, to photographs of medicine cabinets collected in Undercover Ablutions. There have been photographic essays with fake subway signs and rants of horrible commuters documented in The Straphanger's Noose and a children's story The Thin White Duke and The Beatle about a shark hunting adventure at the Hudson River with Paul McCartney and David Bowie. As well as stickers and buttons and other odd items.